Taking stock of love

I've been thinking about the differences between poly and mono, and the stock market. And remember, I am definitely in the category of hopeless romantic, but I'd like to talk about relationships using the stock market as an analogy. Bear with me, this is going to be good.

The American system of capitalism embodied in the stock exchange works on the principle of perfect information, or transparency. Any information about publicly traded companies that is deemed to be "material" - that is, something that might affect earnings, has to be publicly disclosed. So if a pharmaceutical company invents a new drug to cure cancer, every step along the development of the product (positive and negative) must be announced. This ensures that the price of the company's stock always reflects as closely as possible what the market will pay for it, in as close to real-time as possible.

So if people are optimistic about a company and think well of its prospects, appetite for the stock increases and the price goes up. Conversely, if the company appears to be headed for hard times, people will sell any stock they are holding and the price falls. If information is not disseminated as it should be (i.e. insider information) it's illegal to act on it to profit in the market. Just ask Martha Stewart.

So it is in a way with relationships. If you believe that a relationship with someone has a good future, you "buy stock" in the form of spending time and effort being with them and nurturing the relationship. If you think the relationship is headed for disaster, then you're more likely to "sell off" slowly or quickly, by either spending less time with them or dumping them entirely.

Now, the difference between poly and mono is that, in most cases, poly people are more likely to embrace the whole "transparency" concept when it comes to relationships. Consider that in a poly relationship, where each person agrees to be as candid as possible about their feelings and attraction to the other person or other people, everyone involved is kept fully informed. By being informed, each person can then make an informed decision on whether they want to keep buying stock in the relationship, hold the amount they already have, or start selling it off and reallocating their resources elsewhere (i.e. dating other people).

However, in a mono situation, that's like buying a majority interest in one company and letting your investment stay in that one particular stock without any active management on your part. And that's great, if the company you invested in is a blue-chip stock with long-term success in the market, like Apple Computer, General Electric or ExxonMobil. You'll probably come out ahead with a lot less effort.

But if you picked a company that looked safe once that later falls on hard times - like AIG or General Motors - you might find yourself holding a lot of worthless paper, especially if you're not paying attention because you think your choice is faultless. In a mono situation, it's easy to get lazy and stop the regular flow of information because you are fully invested in that company/person and both of you are restricted from pursuing other opportunities. And when the flow of information is impeded, sometimes negative information builds up and all becomes public at once, causing a distress sale with widespread repercussions; i.e., a financial market meltdown, like the one that happened in late 2008-early 2009.

Anyway, that's the thought that's been running through my head lately. Like any other prospectus, I'm not giving advice here. Your situation and risk profile is unique. Please read carefully before you invest.

A missed opportunity

I used to think dating was hard enough as a single girl. Tonight I found out how much harder it can be as a pansexual polyamorous girl.

I went to my local public library after work to pick up the second half of my beginner's Russian language course (Polina and her family speak Russian, so it's nice to be able to say and understand a few words with them). After I got that, I went to look over the movies and found Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which I've wanted to see for a long time since I'm a fan of Woody Allen, and it's a poly-themed movie (there's a consensual love triangle between the three lead actors).

I was holding the movie and the Russian course when an older gentleman in a long black wool coat struck up a conversation with me. He was probably in his 50s, well-groomed, and had a polished and confident manner - think Richard Gere, but taller. He asked if I had any movie recommendations, and he noticed the movie in my hands, saying it was a good one. Since I haven't seen it yet, I couldn't concur, but I said I've been waiting a long time to see it.

Now here is the point where, if I were truly brave, I would have said my interest in the movie stemmed partly from my being polyamorous. But, even as generally open about it as I am outside of work, it's not something I typically blurt out upon first meeting someone, especially in a public library (which, by and large, is not a bad place to meet new people for someone my age).
Then he noticed the language course and asked what my interest was in Russian. I said my girlfriend and her family speaks Russian so I was learning to so I could fit in better with them. I also made the comment that this particular course (the Pimsleur method) seems to be tailored for American men going to Russia to pick up Russian women (lots of phrases like, "Wouldn't you like to have a drink with me? at the restaurant? at the hotel?" "Do you want to buy something?") He looked at me and said, "Well, that's something you don't really need."

We talked for a bit about his interest in Russian history, and my family background (my grandfather being a Chinese ambassador to Russia during the Stalinist period). After a bit more small talk about movies, he wished me a nice evening and left. We did not exchange names or contact information.

Now. I'm not saying I was especially attracted to this guy. Frankly, I didn't even make much eye contact with him because I was looking over the movies. He probably interpreted that as me being disinterested. But when I think back upon the encounter, I could have handled it better. The guy was clearly interested in me, or else he wouldn't have started a conversation. But I didn't give him much of a chance or any real encouragement to get to know me. That's not the way I want to live my life, but old habits die hard.

It also couldn't have been too encouraging for him to hear straight off that I had a girlfriend. I'm certainly not ashamed of that fact, but the problem is that the minute you tell people that, nine times out of 10 they assume you are a lesbian and that you are monogamous. It's hard to dissuade that assumption in a casual encounter ("My girlfriend's family speaks Russian, and oh, by the way, I'm polyamorous and also open to dating men" - yeah, that works great.)

The real missed opportunity here is that I was given a perfect opening to say all these things because of the movie in my hand at the time. The conversation could have gone something like this:

Man: Do you have any recommendations?

Me: Well, I found this one, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Man: That was one of his better ones.

Me: Woody Allen? Yep, I'm a fan of his. It's also of particular interest to me because of the love triangle story since I'm polyamorous and pansexual.

Man: Really? What does that mean?

Me: Polyamorous means engaging in multiple long-term, consensual loving relationships with different partners at the same time. And pansexual just means I'm non-discriminatory in my choice of partners when it comes to gender. For example, I have a girlfriend, which is why I'm learning Russian as you see, but I could also become involved with another girl, or a guy at some point and she would be supportive - unless she couldn't stand them, that is.

Man: That sounds really interesting. Maybe we can more about it over dinner - can I get your phone number and ask you out sometime?

It's still a lot to say, but you can see that I missed an opportunity here that might have turned into something. But as they say, you learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.

While I'm certainly content to spend as much time as possible with Polina, I know she would like to see me happy with someone else as long as we could continue to cultivate our unique relationship. I've never been enthusiastic about dating, which is why I don't put a lot of effort into it. But I do feel strongly about being open to the possibility of love when it presents itself, and in that respect, I failed miserably tonight. When the goddess offers a gift, it should be accepted with an open heart.

Perhaps this experience tonight will help me do better next time.

Stony Brook visit #3

I am just back from a short but intense and lovely visit with Polina out at Stony Brook University. I left my office in Princeton (lots of work news in my next post) at 3 p.m. on Friday to have enough time to get to her school by 7 p.m., which is when her marching band practice ended.

I met up with her at the bandspace and renewed some acquaintances from prior visits and met some new faces. We followed a group of about 30 band members to a Stony Brook ice hockey game, where the team was playing the University of Rhode Island Rams. The band gets free tickets to play at the games, so I got to tag along as a FOB (friend of the band). It was actually the first time in my life I've ever been to an ice hockey game, as it is not a very popular sport in the South. But I've watched enough ESPN in my life to know the basics. It was only the second game for Polina.





Polina did not bring her cymbals to play because they had a drumset instead, so she was allowed to play the crash cymbal for the national anthem:



The game was very tight, but the Sea Wolves were overcome by the score of 3-2 when a goal scored by Stony Brook was ruled to have been made a fraction of a second after the final buzzer sounded. I would have liked to see an instant replay on that, but I guess they don't have that luxury in college games.

We returned to the bandspace and then most of us went to a party at the dorm apartment of the guy who played the drumset, Dan. I got to know one of the Sousaphone players, Steve, who shared his bottle of Chianti with me and Polina. He's from southern California, UC-Berkley, where he earned his music degree in harpsichord, and is now pursuing a master's degree in music history. He asked me what brought me to the northeast, and I gave him the two-minute version of my life history, which he found quite interesting. Then we started talking about polyamory and Polina joined us for part of that conversation, and he was supportive, but didn't think it was something he could do himself.

Polina introduced me around and brought me up to date on what's happening with some of her friends. She spent some time dancing with friends and some time cuddling on the couch with me. We left the party about 1:30 a.m. and headed back to Polina's apartment, where her suitemates were surprised to see us. We stayed up to watch an episode of Castle before climbing up to her top bunk to sleep at around 2:30 a.m.

This visit with my girlfriend was good for me in many ways, not the least of which was lots and lots of kissing/snuggling after missing each other last weekend. But also after our somewhat difficult conversation two weeks ago, I've been able to process that fully (with the help and support of my friends, especially Lori and Sylwia) and continue to live in the moment and love unconditionally. Polina and I continue to focus on loving each other as much and as best we can, given our circumstances, and building what we feel is a sustainable relationship with each other, and one that may someday include other people as well.

Poly goes international

Just a quick post about a very fun night at Poly Cocktail Hour Monday night. I went directly from Princeton and drove to China 1 Restaurant in the city - luckily, the traffic was not very heavy because of the Columbus Day holiday.

There were only a few people there, including my friend Kyle, but I recognized one face from Saturday's picnic in Central Park, a fellow named Rob who had been sitting with Polina most of the afternoon. He's from southern Australia, and he's been on holiday in New York for the past week, but only by chance stumbled upon the Poly Pride event. He actually came to the rally all by himself, which is a pretty gutsy thing to do. However, Polina helped to make him feel welcome enough to show up at PCH two nights later. I only met him briefly, so it was a good chance for me to get to know him better, and he's a delightful fellow and very supportive of the polyamory movement. It's too bad that he lives so far away - he's probably the first guy I've met that might actually have been someone we could have both dated (he's one year younger than me).



I also met a first-time visitor named John and got to know him a bit. There was also a guy named Tommy, who lives in Buenos Aires and is working on a documentary about how true monogamy (one mate for your entire life) is actually a small minority among human relationships. There was Anton, a Mensa fan who talked with Leon when he showed up with Pauline, a Teutonic teenager (she's 19) he met in Italy who came all the way from Germany to visit him. Barbara and Joe also came, and Ken, the guy I dated briefly late last year around the time I first met Polina. He's now getting married to a woman who lives in India whom he met online.

I did my best to introduce everybody around, and keep people engaged with each other. Karaoke Rob showed up, as well as Jeremy, and a few other people I've seen at past events. Reid was there, but spent all his time talking with someone, so I didn't get to talk to him except to say hi. I also met another woman named Barbara who is on my bisexual Yahoo group who was there for the first time.

I noted that I started going to PCH back in April of this year when Polina was in Argentina, and then we started going together throughout the summer ("Busy start of the week" - April 14, 2009) so I'm on a seven-PCH streak right now. When you go to an event this regularly, even a natural introvert like me starts getting comfortable and playing hostess. I'm never better at it than when I'm with Polina ("Baby kitten rescue" - May 12, 2009) but a couple of the new people mistook me for the organizer of the event and couldn't believe that I wasn't, since I seemed to know everybody.

It got to about 10 pm and I was thinking about going home, but K-Rob and Aussie Rob started talking about a hot dog place called Crif's Dogs on nearby St. Marks so we decided to go get a bite to eat. I invited Leon and Pauline along, and they said they would be 10 minutes behind us.



Crif's Dogs is a very interesting place. Not only do they have an extensive lineup of deep-fried hot dogs with all sorts of toppings, but there is a secret speakeasy bar that is accessed through a fake phone booth in the middle of the room. Leon, Pauline and I all squeezed into the booth, Leon picked up the phone and the entire back wall of the phone booth opens up and we walked into the bar to have a look. It's a very posh bar compared to the humble hot dog joint we walked through to get there. The whole set up reminded us of the old TV show Get Smart, or the visitor's entrance to the Ministry of Magic from Harry Potter.

We all ate and talked until it was about midnight, which is way past my bedtime. Aussie Rob and Pauline both were due to fly back the very next day to Australia and Germany respectively, so this is one gathering that will not be replicated for a long time, if ever. Which is a pity because if Polina had only been there, we'd have had two Robs, and teens Pauline and Polina.



All in all, it was a very good night, and very encouraging that polyamory has fans beyond the U.S. I gave Pauline a DVD with a copy of the MTV True Life "I'm Polyamorous" episode on it as a souvenir. Leon and I talked a bit about Open Love NY and getting that ship moving again. Polina and I have been talking today about what we can do together along that line, so we might have some movement on it this week. Stay tuned.

Poly Pride 2009

It was a wonderful weekend for me and Polina, even though our plans kept changing constantly. Friday night she was supposed to come directly out to my apartment and stay the night so we could go to the Poly Pride Rally in Central Park on Saturday morning. But when she was getting ready to leave Stony Brook she found out that her parents, instead of leaving for a music festival that day as we’d expected, decided to stay home one extra night so they could spend some time with her.

So Friday she went home to Staten Island, which actually worked out well for us because that gave me extra time on Friday night to make some peanut sesame noodles for the picnic. This is a cold dish that I have fond memories as a kid, but have never tried to make before, and unfortunately it didn’t come out quite the way I wanted it to, but everybody seemed to like it anyway. Here’s a rough recipe that I followed:

1 lb. Chinese-style white flour noodles, medium width
8 oz. Thai peanut satay sauce
½ red bell pepper, julienned
½ cucumber, peeled, seeded and julienned
1 bunch green onions, sliced diagonally
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sambal olek
2 tbsp soy sauce
White sesame seeds

In a large bowl, combine all sauces and vegetables and let marinate while you boil the noodles to al dente. Drain noodles thoroughly and toss with sauce and vegetables. Chill and sprinkle sesame seeds on just before serving.

I also had more time to buy food at Costco, which included some tabouli, red pepper hummus, garlic stuffed olives, black seedless grapes and a few other things. I had gotten some spicy flatbread for the hummus earlier in the week, so I was putting together a kind of Mediterranean/Asian fusion menu. Unfortunately, I had bought some stuffed grape leaves the other day and subsequently forgot to bring them. But I also had to get a picnic blanket from Home Goods – I couldn’t find one with a gingham pattern like the one my birth family used to use, but I did find a really huge white cotton one with a blue trim that was big enough to spread under my queen-size air mattress, with extra material left over to put the food.

Saturday morning I got up and ran some errands while waiting for Kerry to come over so we could drive into the city together. She had a little trouble finding my apartment, as most people do the first time they drive here, but by that time I had everything packed and we got moving pretty quickly. We loaded the air mattress, food, blankets, camp chair and her hula hoop into my cart and made our way to the Great Hill in Central Park.

Since we were late, Polina was already there and she ran over to greet me with a hug and kisses. She had been press-ganged to read interstitials and poetry between each speaker and/or entertainer that took the stage, so she had to stay nearby. Kerry and I made our way up to the top of the hill where my friend Adele (with husband Lance and child Haley from the Bridgewater picnic) was sitting. It was Adele’s 44th birthday, and she was celebrating with cupcakes for everyone. Adele, Polina and I all got a shout in the poly news blog (http://www.polyinthenews.blogspot.com/)



Throughout the day I saw many of my poly friends and acquaintances who have been mentioned in this blog – Reid, Barbara and partner Joe, Sylwia, Murray and Sandra, Carol, Karaoke Rob (since there are so many Robs, I need to qualify him), Justen, Patrick, Alan (the Boston-based poly news blogger), Kyle, Buck, Lyndell and a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting. Some of them took turns cuddling and making out on my air mattress, which of course is why I brought it. A couple of us gave Polina a back massage when she came up to hang with us for a while.

There were some wonderful musical acts, including N'Harmonics, an accappella group and a three-piece rock band, Houston Bernard & Bonfire Bandit, that were especially good. There was a hilarious cabaret performance by Raven Scheckter's We Three troupe doing poly-Jewish songs to the tunes of West Side Story (e.g. “Maria” became “A Triad”). Comic Kelli Dunham was the emcee, and Polina read various poly-themed letters and writings, in addition to one of her own slam poetry pieces. After her duties were finished, we sat on the air mattress surrounded by friends and I gave her a silver infinity heart pendant on a long silver chain to celebrate our first anniversary of meeting each other in the park at this event a year ago.

As the sun began to dip below the trees, we packed everything up and Kerry, Polina and I drove back to New Jersey together. Kerry came up to the apartment and we gave her the dime tour, as well as showing her some of our favorite books and graphic novels (Sandman, Lost Girls, Fables, etc.). She left soon after to take a babysitting job for a friend, and Polina and I went out to dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. We came home and watched some episodes of TV show The Vampire Diaries on my DVR before going to bed.

We woke up really late the next morning, another benefit of shifting our sleepover to Saturday night, and made our usual breakfast of omelettes and turkey bacon. Polina wanted to get her hair colored again from its faded orange tint, so I made an appointment for her with my hair stylist, Edison. Before we left we had another relationship check-in that was a little difficult for both of us, but ultimately brought some closure to our last conversation at the frozen yogurt shop a couple weeks ago. We drove to her house in Staten Island for a quick stop before heading into Chinatown for the hair appointment. Edison created a deep purple tint for Polina’s bangs, which she loved.

We got out just in time to walk over to the Film Forum on West Houston and 7th Ave. to watch “The Yes Men Save the World,” a documentary movie about two guys who perpetrate elaborate hoaxes that illuminate injustice and corporate greed in the world. On our way back to Staten Island we got lost in Brooklyn for a bit and found this apropos street sign that sums up our weekend:

Her parents were home from the music festival by the time we got back, and her mom had the most amusing blank look of horror on her face when she saw Penny’s new hair color. Both her parents hated the color passionately, and I can’t really fathom why because the dark purple against her natural dark brown is much less flashy than the red, orange and yellow that she’s been wearing the past several months. But Polina is very independent-minded, so I’m sure her parents’ disapproval won’t bother her too much – just as it doesn’t seem to hamper our relationship too much. I stayed for a cup of tea and we said goodnight, ending another happy weekend filled with fun and adventure.

Mabon circle

It was a fairly busy weekend for me but full of good and productive things. It seems like I’m finally starting to adjust to an early sleep schedule, but I still need to work on keeping my apartment clean when I don’t have unlimited time to pick up after myself. It’s not terrible by most people’s standards, but I’ve gotten used to keeping things tidy, especially when I have company over (which is a lot rarer occurrence these days).

So this weekend, I left directly from work on Friday and drove up to Middletown, NY to visit with Buck and Donna so that we could transcribe a poly timeline that was created back in March at the national poly leadership summit I attended as a volunteer. The original scroll of the timeline will be housed at the Kinsey Institute, which has a poly library of historical documents, but we wanted to capture the information on an Excel spreadsheet so it can be used and expanded on a future Web site. Friday night we all had dinner together at a Mexican restaurant, followed by some group cuddling on the couch back at Buck’s place before bed.

Saturday Donna had another engagement upstate, so Buck and I had the day to ourselves. We started with him getting a haircut at a nearby salon, which was also hosting a bridal party that morning. It was actually quite fascinating watching the bride getting her hair done, and it gave me a new appreciation of how much work it takes to create these beautiful hairstyles for special occasions.

Afterwards we had brunch at a Perkins restaurant and then went to Sunshine Studios so I could buy the Woodstock Chimes Emperor wind gong I saw last month when we visited for the Open Love NY leadership retreat. We spent the entire afternoon transcribing the timeline scroll, which extends from about 500 BCE (before Common Era) to 2050 CE and charts the growth of polyamory in the categories of Self, Group, Movement and Culture.

On Sunday I went into the city to meet up with Polina and attend my first group circle at a friend's house for Mabon. It was quite a big step for me to share my spiritual practices with other people, but as part of my continued growth and dedication to my practice, I felt it was a good opportunity to see how it feels as part of a group. My friend Katie (who is married to Patrick, one of the board members of Polyamorous NYC) organizes a family-friendly circle with her five-year-old daughter Evie to teach kids about paganism. Katie and her girlfriend Laura, and her daughter and I joined Evie in circle, and it was a lovely experience. The presence of the children made the circle feel more casual, but also brought a nurturing energy to it.

As Mabon is a time of harvest where we give thanks for the bounty we reap from our efforts throughout the year, I have two major things to be thankful for – my new job and my relationship with Polina. As I said in circle, these are the things that I’ve worked on and put effort into this year that I’m thankful have borne fruit.

Polina arrived afterwards and joined us for the potluck lunch party around the same time that Patrick and little Jasper came home from gymnastics class. I gave Polina a DVD of the MTV True Life episode she hadn’t seen yet (my big national TV debut) and she brought me a present from her trip to Switzerland, an aluminum water bottle with pictures of Swiss postage stamps on it. She also returned my copy of Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon, which she managed to slog through so we can see the movie together when it comes out on November 20.

Polina and I left around 3:30 p.m. and decided to watch a movie, but we couldn’t find a theater nearby that was playing anything we liked. So we stopped in our usual frozen yogurt place on Christopher Street to relax and have another check-in about our relationship, which is moving toward a more poly structure as we both pursue new people while continuing to nurture our bond to each other.

We both acknowledged how our relationship has progressed in the past several weeks, even given the disapproval of her family and the limitations we currently have on spending time together (although I think we are both a little surprised that we’ve managed to see each other three weekends in row after our month-long separation in late August and early September). We had a very candid talk, followed by as much snogging as we could get away with in public, before heading back to Yoshi and dropping her off at her grandmother’s house for Yom Kippur services that evening.

In other news, the job has been going very well so far, other than the commute is rather long. Through familiarity with the route, I have it down to about an hour’s drive time each way. I get to focus on writing all day long, without having to deal with budgets, team supervision, client meetings or any of the other managerial/administrative things that I had to do at my last two jobs in public relations agencies. I also keep pretty regular hours since I’m a contracted employee (unless they want to pay me overtime) and it’s nice being fed a nutritious lunch every day in the free company cafeteria.

However, I’m getting renewed interest from PR firms I interviewed with over the summer as the economy bounces back, and I admit it would be a good thing to live and work in the city, all else being equal, so that I could spend more time with Polina and my other friends. Career-wise, I’d probably be better off staying in Princeton and getting more in-house communications experience, but we’ll see if I get an offer that makes it worth making another jump.

Poly parties

It's Wednesday at work, and I'm looking forward to going home and chilling out for the evening. It seems like it's been a non-stop whirlwind since I started working last week, and indeed it has.

As you recall from my last post, I started my new job on Thursday sleep-deprived because of a mix-up in communications where I didn't think I was going to start so I stayed out late in the city the night before at my poly women's meeting, only to find out that I was expected to come in at 8 a.m. And that's pretty much been par for the course as my body tries to adjust to a different sleep cycle that requires me to leave the apartment at 7 a.m. to beat traffic down to Princeton each morning.

And then of course last weekend I was camping for the wedding, which was lots of fun but not overly conducive to a restful sleep. Sunday evening was fairly restful as I got caught up on laundry and putting things away from the camping trip, but I still wound up going to bed late and waking up early Monday morning.

But enough griping since I don't want anyone to think I'm in any way unhappy about having a job or spending time with my lovely girlfriend. Monday evening I took off a little early after work to drive into the city for two different parties. First up was the monthly Poly Cocktail Hour at China 1 Restaurant, where I met up with my Open Love NY friends Buck, Donna, Lyndell, Simon, and Leon, and also was pleasantly surprised to see so many members of my women's poly group there as well - Sylwia, Barbara and Oxy showed up. I said hello to other regulars (Derek, Norman, and a few I haven't learned their names yet) and met some new people, but didn't really engage with any of them since there were so many of my friends there and I wanted to spend time with them. Oxy and I started talking about boobs and she let me touch her ample, all-natural bosom (she's an F cup) which I did ever so gently with the tip of my finger.



I only mention this because of what happened later in the evening at the second party, which was Diana and Kerry's MTV True Life viewing party. I took a cab down to Fulton Street near South Street Seaport where Diana's friend Hookah Mike rents a huge, six-bedroom loft that he shares with five roommates. The apartment has two large common areas in an open floor plan with 12-foot ceilings; one area includes the windows and the other connected to the kitchen and dining areas. This place was so big, they had room for a ping-pong table in between these two common areas, which each had its own projection TV and sofa/loveseat/coffee table. I say all this because I've never seen such a spacious apartment in the city and I was a little overwhelmed. I can't begin to imagine what a place like that must cost in monthly rent!



I only saw a few people there I knew - Birgitte (past president of Polyamorous NYC), Reid (co-founder of Cuddle Party), Hannah (a butch genderqueer I met a few months ago at Poly Cocktail Hour), Diana's boyfriend Ed and Kerry’s boyfriend Kyler - but most of the people seemed to be friends of Diana who had helped or participated in the MTV show, plus several of Diana's partners of course. The show started 30 minutes later than it was supposed to, which caused some confusion, but once it started, it was a non-stop rollercoaster of laughter, groans and general hysterics. Kerry, Diana and Ed, who starred in the show, didn't get to see it prior to airing, so they had the biggest reactions since they were on the screen most of the time.



My participation was reduced to a brief cameo, as I was in the background for a couple shots and got one close-up that lasted about half a second. None of my dialogue was used (which I’m a bit relieved about) so it's not likely anyone is going to notice me (although I was wearing a very sexy, low-cut turquoise silk top seen below with Erika, Birgitte's girlfriend).



During the show, I was sitting on the floor next to Hannah, who was sitting next to a Korean girl, who introduced herself to me as Nari. I immediately was sure we'd met before because she seemed very familiar - it turns out she is quite famous as an associate producer for the Travel Channel who appeared on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations show when they went to Seoul, South Korea. I've seen that particular episode several times because I love Korean food, and it's also one of the funniest episodes of the show, with Nari's bubbly and youthful optimism in stark contrast to Tony's world-weary cynicism clashing at every turn. And I'm not the only one who liked the episode – you can read plenty of Nari's fan mail in the comments section of her recent post about Vancouver on the Travel Channel blog.

Since Nari works in television, she had a lot to say about how it looked like MTV took advantage of the three poly men from North Carolina who appeared on the show. We all agreed that Diana and Kerry (and Ed) did a great job presenting polyamory as a legitimate and workable (albeit complicated) lovestyle, requiring good communication, maturity and flexibility to be successful. Unfortunately, the flip side with the poly men showed the opposite is also true, that without those qualities, polyamory can result in major drama and heartache. It was also pointed out repeatedly that the NC men lacked any kind of poly support network or the experience of someone like Diana that might have helped them learn how to handle things better.

Of course I am reminded of my own experience with trying to start a poly family where the problem was a complete lack of buy-in to polyamory as a sustainable lovestyle by the other three-fourths of the family. My ex-girlfriend often lamented what she saw as my need to be part of a larger community to help deal with our poly situation, something she had no interest in doing. Predictably, people who find themselves in poly situations without adequate resources or experience find it a lot harder to make things work in the end.

Once the show wrapped up, people started to drift toward Hookah Mike's bedroom to talk about the show. I was talking to Nari and her fiance Sam and showing her some of my pictures on my camera. I asked Sam to take a picture of us, and he took several while Nari started getting really frisky with me. Sam sort of encouraged it while he was taking the photos too. After the photo shoot Sam wanted to go home, and said he would wait for Nari downstairs. Nari wanted to take me to a karaoke bar or do something else since the party seemed to be winding down, but I demurred, saying I had to get home and get some sleep as it was around midnight.



She was very persistent however, so I settled for chatting with her while she smoked a cigarette while we sat on the window ledge. If anyone has seen the episode with Nari on the Travel Channel, let me tell you: she is every bit as energetic and perky in person as she was on the show. We both look much younger than we actually are - she’s 27 but looks like she’s 17 and still gets carded for cigarettes. Her first guess at my age was 28 and it took her about five guesses to get high enough. I found out that she was getting married to Sam this Friday, and I asked if she was poly. She said no, but that she and Sam were very open and poly-friendly.

We talked about our exes and she told me about her first girlfriend in college. She didn't say she was bisexual, but she did say that while she loves cock, she also loves big boobs and can't wait to get pregnant so that her boobs will grow bigger (she's almost totally flat-chested). I asked her if she would like to feel mine, and she dove in with gusto, putting a two-handed grab on my chest that would make any NFL wide receiver green with envy.

I think it was right about then that Sam walked in, complaining that he had been waiting for half an hour because he'd been locked out downstairs. They got into a bit of a fight, and I tried to explain that I wasn't trying to keep Nari from leaving or doing anything inappropriate, at least given that we were at a party with mostly sex-positive, polyamorous people. Sam practically dragged her away, but not before Nari planted a goodbye kiss on me. After they left, I and two other people who had watched this scene unfold sat looking stunned at each other, wondering what it was all about. They certainly did not seem like they belonged at that party, nor should be getting married in four days. Shortly after, I said goodbye to everyone and left myself, passing the couple once more on the street on the way to get Yoshi from the garage.

Tuesday night after work I stopped by Il Trapezio Cafe in Nutley, NJ to attend a book reading by my client, author and academic Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, who has just published Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet. Several of my friends also attended - Buck and Donna, Murray and Sandy, and Adele from my women's group, who works a few blocks away at the public library. We had a nice lively discussion, and Serena signed a book and gave it to me. I've been working for her for the past three months, but I have to end our working relationship now because I simply don't have the time anymore. But hopefully the seeds we've sown in the media will bear some fruit in the coming months that will contribute to the success of her book.



So now I'm all caught up on the weird and fun stuff that's been happening lately, I'm looking forward to a couple of quiet nights at home, watching movies and catching up on sleep before the weekend. Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) begins on Friday at sundown and ends Sunday at nightfall (which I guess is full dark), so I'm going to visit Polina at Stony Brook to watch her marching band Saturday night, and then celebrating with her family on Sunday.

Postscript: A shout goes out to my best friend Lori, who just accepted a marriage proposal today from her boyfriend of 2 and a half years, Erik. The date is set for May on the anniversary of their first meeting. Congratulations!

First day at work

Just got back from my first day at work, an 11-hour one at that, so I'm pretty beat. But there's so much going on, I have to write a few lines just to keep up with my fast-moving life.

Tuesday night I went to Madison, NJ about 30 minutes away to hang out with my friend Kerry. She's been feeling a little apprehensive about the upcoming MTV premiere of True Life titled "I'm Polyamorous" in which she and her now-ex girlfriend Diana will be featured and wanted some advice. I'll probably also appear in a cameo from the party at the Slipper Room way back in May ("Birthdays, MTV and Polina" - May 6, 2009) but not for more than a few seconds, I'm sure. If you want to catch it, the show premieres this Monday at 10 p.m. ET ("TNG poly documentary coming to MTV" - Polyamory in the News).

The worst of it was that I had a job interview the next morning with a PR firm in Hackensack, so even though I felt like crap I managed to drag myself out of bed and get to the interview, a few minutes late because I got lost due to poor directions. The interview was fine, but it will be a few weeks at least before I hear anything. I also got emails that morning saying that I wasn't going to start my job on Thursday as expected, so I figured I'd at least be able to sleep late the next day, as I had plenty left to do on Wednesday.

After the interview I went into the city for a haircut with Edison, and he did his usual thorough job. I had a few hours to kill before the Women's Poly Meeting, so I walked around the Lower East Side and had dinner at Whole Foods before my friends all showed up. We had a new woman named Sheila who had responded to my PolyNYC personal ad, and we've been emailing back and forth a bit, which is how she knew about the meeting. Afterwards, I took my friend and group co-founder Sylwia back to Weehawken before heading home.

When I got home at midnight, I found emails that contradicted the previous ones, and asked me to come in to my new job at 8 am! Yikes! So instead of sleeping in, I got about 4 hours of sleep and showed up a half-hour early (since I didn't know what traffic would be like). The first day was very good - got all set up on a computer with two screens in a quiet corner of the HR department. I found out that they serve free lunch every day, which is wonderful, and they also have free sodas and snacks for employees. They even have an indoor half-court basketball hoop and locker rooms for working out. It's a 90 minute drive down there without traffic, and god only knows how long during rush hour. At this point, I'm inclined to go early and stay late just to rack up paychecks and avoid sitting in traffic. My paycheck today is almost double my weekly unemployment check!

That is all for now - I'm off to bed.

Polys in the wild

It's been quite an eventful 48 hours with Polina, and following on the heels of our Great Adventure Shindig a week ago, we definitely have made the most of our dwindling time together. In four days she leaves for a week-long family vacation overseas, and then goes directly to college for band camp. That means we probably won't see each other again until Sept. 12, when she's taking me to her sister's wedding. But we've had some very good talks recently and I think we understand what's needed if we want this relationship to weather our extended periods of separation while she's at school.

Friday I brought Yoshi into the Honda dealer to have the engine problem looked at, and it turned out to be a major repair of almost $2,000 requiring a multi-day stay, so I drove a CR-V loaner all weekend. Saturday night I had dinner with my family, and we completed our Kill Bill series by watching the second movie. I think that's all the Tarantino I'm going to get out of them, but that's okay - I'm not a big fan of any of his other movies besides Pulp Fiction, which they've already seen.

Sunday morning Penny called me and we chatted for a while until Ryan showed up at her place for a visit - he came to the first part of our Great Adventure Shindig at my apartment ("Great Adventure Shindig" - Aug. 5, 2009). I packed for an overnight stay and joined them around 5 p.m. to hang out while Penny tended to laundry and helped her mom and grandmother work on a scrapbook for her sister's upcoming wedding.

Ryan, as you might recall, is a polyamorous guy who is dating a monogamous woman named Beth. We decided the best way to help him was to invite Beth to Monday's Poly Cocktail Hour so she could see for herself poly people in their natural environment, so to speak. After dinner with Penny's family, we three went upstairs so that Ryan could give us an improptu lesson in shibari (warning: link contains nudity). He performed this lovely tortoise shell tie on Penny (who of course kept her pajamas on):



He also demonstrated an ankle tie on me and performed some light S&M on both of us using a plastic rod from the window mini-blinds in Penny's parents' room. I know this sounds very kinky and probably weird to some people, but it was really just innocent play, and involved a lot of instructional talking about etiquette, role-playing and boundaries. Plus, we couldn't really do anything too loud or involved since Penny's parents and grandmother were downstairs working on the scrapbook. They even called for her once while she had her wrists tied to her ankles and we had to quickly untie her so she could go downstairs.

After we put the ropes away we sat up and watched an episode of HBO's True Blood on DVD before Ryan had to go home. Penny and I got ready for bed and watched six more episodes in bed together on her laptop until about 5:30 a.m. before we finally stopped to go to sleep. Then her mom woke us at 8:30 a.m. to ask about something, but we went back to sleep until about 11:30 a.m. before we finally got up.

We spent a good portion of Monday afternoon looking at her family photo albums and cleaning up her room, which has been just this side of a disaster area for as long as I've known her. We hung up all her clothes, sorted out rubbish from recyclables, got everything off the floor and vacuumed. Now her room will be more presentable for any guests who need to use it while she's away at college:



Ryan came over after work and we followed him into the city to pick up Beth from her studio right at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. We had a bite to eat at an organic grocery store and proceeded to Poly Cocktail Hour at China 1 Restaurant. We met several first-time attendees early on, plus our friends Barbara and Joe, Simon, Lyndell, Bill, Diana, Rob ("Karaoke virgin no more!" - July 27, 2009), plus many other familiar faces. Far from feeling threatened and insecure, Beth seemed to have a very good time hanging out with us:



The event was quite successful this month, and they soon had to open a second room to accommodate the crowd. Polina and I spent the latter part of the evening participating in some group cuddling and giving/receiving massages with various people:



Ryan and Beth left around 11 p.m. while Polina and I stayed until about midnight, saying hi to the owner Alan when he showed up late. We said goodbye to everybody and drove to Ryan and Beth's apartment in East Rutherford for a quick visit and to see some of their collection of erotic and BDSM toys. We got home around 1:30 a.m. and had some tea while I showed Penny some of my shoebox photos from my former life that were rescued from the fire of 2005 before going to bed.

After breakfast the next morning we finished the last two episodes of True Blood and we got a text from Ryan, saying that Beth had a great time with us the night before, and that "progress was being made" in resolving their relationship issues. It's encouraging to believe that their relationship will be stronger now that Beth has seen what poly people are really like, instead of what she thinks we're like.

I drove Penny back to Staten Island to pick up the things I'd left in her house from the night before and then drove her to her doctor's appointment. Then I went to the White Castle near her house and bought a baker's dozen of hamburgers and jalapeno cheeseburgers to eat on the way home. Once home, I went to pick up Yoshi and now I've got to get ready for tomorrow's trip to the city where I have two job interviews and plan to visit Simon to work on his marketing stuff.

The irony of monogamy

There is a very balanced and thoughtful essay on the irony of monogamy on Examiner.com today that is worth addressing. You can read the full article here.

The article asks the pointed question: how did we as a civilization come to idealize lifelong monogamy as the primary, if not only, form of loving relationship? How and why did this become our modern-day reality? Were we biologically predestined to be this way? Or are we the living in the shadow of historical accidents?

After much discussion about human biology and the patriarchal usurpation of goddess-based religion, the conclusion is that monogamy may have its roots in the control of female sexuality so that men could keep track of their lineage, thus historically linking monogamy with women's oppression throughout human history. And in a final huge ironic twist, the modern stereotype requires that women have to nail men down and make them commit to monogamy!

However, the article does conclude in a balanced way, saying that none of this means that monogamy, as such, in necessarily bad - only that these conclusions should give us pause for thought. The writer asserts that some people (maybe even a majority of people) are best-suited for some form of a monogamous lifestyle – whether it be life-long monogamy, or serial monogamy.

However, he also makes the point that people (especially women) might do well to seriously consider the roots of their own desire for monogamy and if they do, they might find that the best path for some people is some form of non-monogamy. Living as we do now, with the option of genetic paternity testing, it could be that the original motivation for the widespread social endorsement of monogamy as the "one true path" for a spiritually rewarding and socially fruitful life is now gone.

Relationship talks

I just got home from a nice visit with Polina on Staten Island over the last day and a half. She has been busy working at her job in Manhattan, and was out all weekend in Baltimore for Otakon 2009, a huge anime, manga and Asian pop culture conference. She cosplayed as Duo Maxwell, a character from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.



And she wasn't the only person playing Duo - there were at least three others at Otakon (but she was the only one who bothered to bind her breasts for added fidelity). Polina is at the far left:



She got back from Baltimore late Sunday night and slept over at her grandmother's place near St. Marks, and I picked her up from there Monday afternoon to bring her home with all her cosplay gear she had to carry. We hung out and read books together for a couple hours, making plans on Friday to see a show in Williamsburg called Adventure Quest with some of her new Otakon friends. Supposedly "capturing the style and spirit of the Golden Age of home computer gaming, Adventure Quest is both a nostalgic treat and a glimpse into the yawning Void." I expect that Penny and I will chuckle at different things in this play, considering that I was playing computer games that were state of the art almost a decade before she was born.

Afterwards we drove to Lori's place about 10 minutes away on Staten Island and she made us a nice dinner of spicy fried eggplant, pan fried vegetable dumplings, fresh green beans and onions in a curry sauce and rice. Then we watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which neither of them had seen yet. We'll try to watch the new Harry Potter movie in the city next Wednesday. Lori's boyfriend Erik came home soon after the movie concluded and we chatted for a while before saying goodnight to them and going back to Penny's house to watch an episode of True Blood on Penny's MacBook.

I called Tara for goodnight around 1 a.m. to tell her I was staying overnight, and we had a decent chat, all things considered. Penny and I stayed up until almost 4 a.m., talking about very personal things that we've not shared before. I am encouraged that we continue to break new ground in our developing relationship, showing that we can trust each other and communicate about things that are sometimes uncomfortable to speak about.

The next morning we made an omlette for breakfast and continued watching True Blood. We got a pizza for lunch and had another good relationship talk in the car as I dropped her off at the ferry terminal on her way to visit with other friends over the next couple days.

Age gaps

Some old business before I get into a new update - here's a photo of the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park, where I played my cricket game. This stainless steel artwork is 140 feet high, 120 feet in diameter, and weighs 700,000 pounds. As Marty McFly might say, that's a lot of DeLoreans. The empty pool surrounding the base was filled with skateboarders and cyclists taking advantage of the smooth surface that is normally underwater.



On Wednesday I ran a bunch of errands during the day, including setting up another job interview for July 16 - I have two scheduled for that day, both PR agencies in NYC. One of them is a smaller agency near Grand Central Station, and the other one is a Top 5 agency a few blocks from my last job at Agent K. I'm also still waiting to hear from the agency in Cranford, NJ, but from a purely logistical standpoint, I'd much rather work in the city than have to drive through rush-hour traffic every day.

In the afternoon, Polina came over to my place after spending the previous night at her friend Laura's house in nearby North Haledon - Laura was part of our first Firefly marathon last month ("Firefly marathon" - June 10, 2009). We drove into the city to meet with Lori at my monthly Women's Poly Meetup Group, which includes my friends Barbara and Sylwia, who have been mentioned before ("Midsummer update" - June 23, 2009). We had nine women total at the meeting, a record high for this group, including a new woman also named Michelle, who is of Japanese descent. She was kind to take this photo of the rest of us - Barbara had to leave early, and Lori didn't want to be in the photo since she's not technically part of the group yet.



From left starting at the top, the women pictured are Adele, Polina, then myself, Sylwia, Oxy and Tamara. Lori actually knew Tamara as a friend and was pleased to reacquaint with her.

One topic of discussion, not surprisingly since Polina and I were there as a couple for the first time, was talking about age gaps between partners. Adele and Lori both have older male partners with age gaps similar to the one between me and Polina, and a few others were struggling with smaller, but still significant age gaps between themselves and younger men.

Although I constantly crack wise about the age gap between me and Polina, I've never considered it a serious obstacle to our relationship. Obviously, my personal history makes me unlike most women of my biological age, and it's not entirely in jest that I celebrate my 5th birthday next Wednesday. There is no doubt I skew very young in my appearance, my demeanor and my outlook on life. Polina, for reasons of her own, skews older than her tender age, so from an outsider's perspective our age gap seems unremarkable. In fact, many of the women last night commented that we seemed a lot closer in age than we actually are. Perhaps part of that has to do with the way we are slowly finding our feet as a couple. At least we have the advantage that no one will ever mistake me for being her mom.

On the rare occasions I think about our age gap, I consider the reasons that many people make age an issue in relationships. The most practical and objective one would be having children - a couple who are both in early childbearing years are probably going to be more successful at conceiving and raising a child together. Then the more subjective reasons have to do with social stigmas, inequities in education/income/career development, and generational attitudinal differences. Finally, there is the inevitable issue of not having the chance to grow old together, barring an early departure (morbid, I know, but it's true).

For Polina and I, believe it or not, we have talked about children, and natural childbirth is probably not in either of our futures, together or separately. Obviously social stigmas aren't much concern to transgender polyamorous pansexuals - what's one more log on the fire that social conservatives want to light under us? As for the inequities mentioned, her exceptional intelligence and my careful separation of my work and my private life keep those in check, while generational differences are something we have both always thrived on, even before we ever met one another. With the circles she travels in, Polina tends to have older friends (she has two older sisters), while mine tend to be younger than me (e.g. Pearl and Amy from my old life, and practically every close friend I have today).

As for the issue of mortality, I simply turn to one of my three core tenets - live for today, live in the moment. We don't know what tomorrow will bring. If we are happy today, that is enough. It would be a shame and a waste to spoil a chance at love today because we worry about what the situation will be decades from now. As I've said before, I'm not looking for the one "perfect" love that may or may not cross my path. Love is too precious to me to turn away because it doesn't meet some arbitrary standard or requirements. If two people feel that connection and spark between them, it should not be ignored. If there is no room in your life for more love, then you must be a very lucky person.

Poly advice column

The job interview on Thursday was pretty much a waste of time. They were looking for someone at a lower level than me, and my big-agency experience seemed to work against me. So after that was done, I went downtown to visit Polina at her workplace and drop off an Anita Blake library book for her to read.

Then I came back uptown and met my friend Barbara (who participates in my women's poly group) at the West Side YMCA to play a couple games of racquetball. I haven't played in several years, but it came back to me pretty quickly, and it was a nice workout. I'm glad I didn't get hit with the ball because I sure remember how much that can sting.

The weather here has been dreary, humid and pretty downright miserable, and it caused Anika to cancel any plans we might have made for today, since her flight was hampered by weather. I was going to have a hike in Yonkers tomorrow with my lesbian group, but that might be cancelled as well. Plus, the rain is keeping Tara and I from playing tennis.

I have been thinking a lot about relationships since Tara and I have had a bit of a difficult week. We've both been busy with various things and haven't had a chance to talk face-to-face very much. I hope we will get some time to connect again soon - she and the other girls are coming over soon for Saturday night dinner at my place, so at least we'll see each other for the first time since last Sunday night when we went to see Angels & Demons together. Although we try to talk on the phone every day, I can't remember the last time we went so long without seeing each other.

I did want to share this advice column on Feministing.com that offers some good advice about non-monogamous relationships:

Ask Professor Foxy: Am I Nonmonogamous? What Does That Mean for My Relationship?

It's oh so quiet...

It's been a very quiet week so far, a nice respite from my busy month of May. As I look back on my calendar, today is only the seventh day in the entire month where I haven't been out to see a movie with my family, or been at a meeting, a party, a museum or a group gathering. We were planning to have a family visit to the Metropolitan Museum today, but since Tara has come down with bronchitis, that had to be postponed.

The fact that both of my sweeties are sick at the same time is a bummer, but at least I'm not getting sick - my resilient constitution seems up to the challenge. For the last five years I've been highly disease-resistant, even when I had other people living with me in Houston. Several times both of them would be sick and I'd still be going like the Energizer bunny.

On Memorial Day I spent the day alone, and it felt a little weird to me. I usually don't do well with national holidays, as they remind me of my disconnect with my birth family. Tara was busy shopping for air conditioners, Penny had company over and Lori and Agnieszka were not available by phone, so I spent the day doing laundry and reading through my old journal that covers the period of Dec. 1990 to mid-1995. These dates correspond to graduating from college and saying goodbye to Agnieszka Prime to the start of my relationship with my ex in Houston. It was a pretty pathetic period in my life, I have to say, and I'm not sure why I chose to be introspective about it. But I'm over it now, and moving on to living in the present again.

Yesterday Tara and I went to see Terminator: Salvation, and we both thought it was pretty good. I would say it's probably my third favorite in the series, with T-3 being my least favorite and T-2 my favorite. Afterwards we came home and made pancakes and bacon for dinner, and had a nice, quiet evening.

I've been asked to take on a small freelance assignment publicizing a book on Gaia theory and its relationship to bisexuality and polyamory. It's got me thinking about the possibility of a polyamorous family and what that might look like someday with people who share my philosophies and ideals. I imagine a small group of non-monogamous, romantically committed people living together, supporting each other, raising children and being a part of a larger erotic community where no one has to hide their feelings.

It would require communication with each other at a much higher level than many people may be comfortable with, but we're talking about creating a new kind of family outside the traditional nuclear model and therefore little can be assumed. This model is also built on love, but instead of being expected to remain static, it grows organically over time - changing as people and situations change and involving multiple partners. It is based on the assumption that we humans have a limitless capacity to love each other and should not be required to hoard or ration the love we give and receive. One of the book's central ideas is that the more love that we all are able to give and receive, the better it will be for us as a species, and for the planet as a whole. Just like Burt Bacharach said, it's what the world needs now.

Public speaking

It's been a fairly eventful 24 hours, and my period of hyperactivity this month is slowly coming to a close, although one never knows what tomorrow will bring.

Yesterday in the midst of running my usual errands, I bought a new tennis racquet, a HEAD Metallix 6 because I was tired of using Tara's outdated one when we play. This racquet seems to be pretty close in design to my old Wilson Hammer 2.6 that I lost in the fire of 2005 (and which is long discontinued) - top heavy, extremely stiff, 115 square inches in surface area, and a wide beam design for stability. I have high hopes that it will suit my game once I get to try it out.

In the evening my family went out and saw Star Trek again at the free movie theater. Unfortunately, we seemed to be surrounded by talkative teenagers who felt compelled to hum along with music and make snarky comments about the movie. Plus there was an unhappy infant in the back row whose parents felt entitled to see this movie, even if it meant subjecting everybody else to a crying baby. But we muddled through and enjoyed the movie anyway. I, however, managed to lose a dental crown from eating too much popcorn, which was extremely annoying. So the next morning I called my dentist and made an afternoon appointment to get that fixed.

I went into the city by bus, first to the dentist, and then met Lori at Macy's in Herald Square where she was doing some clothes shopping. Then I went down to the LGBT Center for my Polyamorous NYC meeting, where I filled in as the presenter for Katelynn Cusanelli, who was a no-show for our highly publicized event. It was a smaller crowd than I was expecting, so that was probably better for me. I was surprised to see my friend Angel, who works at the Metropolitan Museum ("Limerancing through life" - Feb. 27, 2009) and Afiya, one of Polina's friends I met last New Year's Eve at her house ("2008 in review" - Jan. 1, 2009). My friends Buck, Kyle and Simon from Open Love NY were there to support me, and Buck was kind enough to take pictures for me:



Everyone seemed to enjoy the presentation and I got lots of compliments from the Board members and my friends, but naturally I thought I could have done a lot better. I didn't have very much time to prepare, and I was actually pretty nervous. I think I would have been even more nervous if Polina was there, but she was feeling too sick to come into the city.

Angel and I rode the subway together back to Port Authority and got caught up with each other's lives - she recently returned from Australia where she had a three-week concert engagement as an opera singer. Once I get a job, I definitely want to see a few more operas and shows - I miss the energy of a live performance.

Tomorrow Tara and I are going to visit MOMA once more before my annual membership expires at the end of the month, so I'll have more pictures to post then.

Learning about polyamory

This is a very interesting and enlightening commentary written by a San Francisco blogger about how she educated herself about polyamory by reading Jenny Block's book Open. I like the way she describes her thought process from believing that polyamory won't work to understanding that at its core, polyamory isn't really about having multiple sex partners. At its core, polyamory is about creating workable, fulfilling relationships outside of traditional monogamy.

She writes: I love that being attracted to, or even coupling with, someone else doesn't have to be a relationship's deal-breaker. Even more so, I'm enthralled with the sense of personal satisfaction, empowerment, and validation -- and interpersonal intimacy and connection -- that the necessary communication about such a possibility would foster. Mostly, I'm glad that my fear about what a relationship has to be is starting to be lifted. Because I do want a partnership. I just don't want any of the kinds I've already seen.

Read the full post: Open wide: Polyamory reconsidered

Birthdays, MTV and Polina

This is going to be the longest post ever written in this blog, with lots of pictures, and important stuff about Polina, so settle in if you're interested in reading. I'm going to tackle things chronologically because a lot's happened in the past 72 hours and I don't want to miss anything.

Saturday morning I picked up Bug and Tara and we went to our local comic book store for Free Comic Book Day. It was the first time since I've moved here that we didn't go to Midtown Comics in Times Square for this event. Midtown does a great job, but it's a bit of a hassle because the line starts forming an hour before the store opens, and by the time we typically get there, it's about 50 people long and it's still at least 30 minutes before opening. Plus we have to find parking and pay for bridge toll, etc., etc. It's been fun in the past, but it's just not worth it for free comic books. Besides, we want to support our local stores that we shop at more frequently.

Saturday night I was invited to my friend Leon's birthday party at River, a bar in Hell's Kitchen where he and his friend Paloma were guest-bartending for the night. It was also my first time taking the bus in from my apartment to Port Authority Bus Terminal, since the trains in my area don't run on weekends. There's a transit center about 500 feet from my apartment across the highway, so it's super-convenient to park Yoshi there, hop on a bus for $6 (cheaper than paying the $8 bridge toll) and go directly to Port Authority.

Leon is one of my friends involved in creating Open Love NY (a group of people which I geekily refer to as "the Separatists" in a Star Wars reference) and one of the nicest guys I know. When I walked in I gave him a hug and he introduced Paloma, who recognized me from a past Polyamorous NYC meeting, although I didn't remember her. I suppose I do tend to stick out in a crowd, being a tall Asian girl in a group of medium-sized, mostly white people (although Leon is six-foot-six). Leon expertly made me a blueberry cosmopolitan and I settled into a barstool next to two young women named Casey and Michelle (yes, same spelling - I checked). My friend Simon came in shortly after and sat down next to me on the other side.

Simon and I spent most of the evening chatting with Casey and Michelle, and we seemed to hit it off well, although they are not polyamorous and it was fun watching Casey's face as Simon was explaining polyamory to her. Casey and I are in similar lines of work, and we both lost our jobs in December. She looks a lot like Ferris Bueller's girlfriend Sloane Peterson in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. She and Michelle are long-time friends, having grown up together since Catholic elementary school. So when it was getting late, the three of us left at the same time (Simon stayed behind) and they kindly offered me a lift back to New Jersey so I wouldn't have to take the bus home. After dropping me off at Yoshi, they turned around and drove back to Queens. It was a very generous gesture, and I hope we'll see each other again at some point just to hang out and talk more.

Sunday morning I picked up my family and we went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which I thought was a pretty good movie, although a little slow in some parts between action sequences. Also, I wish we were either given more intel on new characters, or that established characters from the comic were used more. Also, some of plot had a few Sentinel-sized holes, but what the hey, it's a comic book movie. But lastly, I found out the meaning of my friend Joanna's cryptic comment about the character Deadpool - there are two different Easter eggs tacked on after the closing credits, and we saw the one about Wolverine in Japan. See this article for details, but watch out for spoilers if you haven't seen the movie.

Monday night was my friend Diana's MTV party at my old burlesque studio The Slipper Room, where Agnieszka and I took six weeks of burlesque dance classes. As I've mentioned in this blog before ("Diana Adams on TV" - March 4, 2009) Diana is an activist for the sex-positive community in New York and she is currently working with the award-winning docuseries MTV True Life for an episode titled "I'm Polyamorous." The show spotlights Diana's life with her long-time boyfriend and current girlfriend Kerry, who is 21 and exploring bisexuality for the first time, and follows their lives as they experience what it's like to be young and polyamorous today. MTV's camera crew was at the party filming the performances and setting up conversation scenes for the show, which premieres in August.

At this point, I'll start talking about Polina. As I was getting ready to leave my apartment for the party, she called me up out of the blue. I say that because I had left her a voice message last Sunday (4/26) which she never returned, although we swapped a couple off-line chat messages on the computer last week. So in the short time we had to talk before I had to leave, I explained to her that not returning phone calls was unacceptable if we were going to even be friends, let alone anything more than that. She apologized and promised not to do it again, and we planned to meet at the party later in the evening, as she was on the performers lineup to do a reading of some of her poetry.

When I got to the club, the entertainment started with a performance by Tash and Sarah, two members of The Gyronauts, a troupe of hula-hoop performers. Sarah performed solo at the Poly Pride rally last year, and I was very impressed with her skills, especially since I can't hoop to save my life.



I later learned from my friend Buck that Polina had arrived at the club before I got there, but couldn't get in because she's under the legal drinking age, even though she's a performer. So she went to visit a friend in the city instead, and on the phone we made plans to see each other Tuesday at her home in Staten Island.

Since The Slipper Room is a burlesque theater there were a few burlesque acts, both male ("boylesque") and female, and by far the best one was by a performer named Anita Cookie (say that fast), who did a clever routine with a tweed trenchcoat to the tune of Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Man Without Love." As someone who trained in burlesque, I can tell she put a lot of effort into creating her routine and I was very impressed. Since this is a PG-13 blog, I didn't take a picture while she was performing (she stripped down to pasties and a g-string) but I loved the tattoo on her shoulder, which she let me photograph after coming offstage:



I ran into so many people in the poly community at the party, it was very exciting having so many of my friends and acquaintances in one place at the same time (unfortunately minus Polina). Besides Buck and Diana, Leon, Paloma, Lyndell, Justen (from Polyamorous NYC), Birgitte and her girlfriend Erika all showed up. Erika and I worked closely together back in March ("Poly Leadership Summit 2009" - March 3, 2009) and Birgitte and I worked together on the New York Times article and the Poly Pride Rally in Central Park last year ("Poly public relations" - October 5, 2008). I also ran into Storm, a young poly woman who came to one of my New Women's Polyamory support group meetings. Plus there were one or two other people who recognized me from the Leadership Summit.




For the MTV portion of the night, the camera crew set up two group conversations with people who agreed to appear and speak on camera. In the first group, Buck, Justen, Lyndell and myself represented a group of experienced polyamorists giving advice to Kerry, while Diana looked on. In the second group, they rounded up a bunch of younger poly-friendly and poly-curious people to talk with Kerry as peers about their experiences with polyamory. In this photo, the back of Birgitte's head is directly in front of the camera, Diana and Kerry are sitting to her right, then continuing around the table is a guy I don't know, then Tash, then a girl I don't know, then Sarah, and her girlfriend Caitlin.



It was an incredibly fun night, and the only real drama was at the end, when I lost track of time and almost missed the last train back to New Jersey. Leon was a lifesaver in hustling me, Storm, her boyfriend, another woman and himself into a shared cab and getting us to Penn Station in less than 12 minutes. I made it to the train with less than 15 seconds to spare.



Tuesday morning I drove out to Penny's house and we cooked some pasta together for lunch and she gave me a souvenir from her trip, a pendant made from an Argentine one peso coin with the outline of the church tower carved out. She didn't know that I have a passing interest in numismatics and notaphily, but that made it an especially appropriate gift for me. She also gave me a copy of the graphic novel The Professor's Daughter, which she picked up from a comics writers convention on Saturday, and I gave her an extra copy of the free Wolverine Saga comic that I had also given to Tara last week. She showed me her photos and videos from the trip, and then we took a walk down to the beach in front of her house. We talked for a long time about our relationship, which I felt was on the cusp of becoming more serious three months ago when she left for her trip.

As I've outlined in my theory on unconditional love, I don't put expectations on what a relationship is going to be. Polina and I try to practice what is known as "radical honesty," or being as direct as possible about our feelings without worrying about hurting each other, because we both know we have no intention of doing so. During our walk, I made myself clear about how her inattentiveness at times was hurtful to me (e.g., not returning phone calls), and she made herself clear that she did not want our relationship to change, either to be more serious or more casual. We agreed that we're going to try and keep our relationship somewhere between friends and lovers, without any additional expectations or commitments from anybody. At least for now, this is the relationship that works for both of us, and we've communicated our needs to each other. Whether and how we are both able to fulfill those needs will determine where we go from here.

As I said in my theory post, love is rarely a game played on equal terms, and we both understand that my feelings for her are probably stronger than hers are for me, although she enjoys my company very much, and we are physically affectionate, but platonic. Perhaps we can be described as "physically affectionate friends." She describes her feelings as loving me, but just not being in love with me. To her, being in love is that crazy, almost frantic, change-your-life impulse where you would do almost anything for the other person. Her view reminds me of the following quote from Daniel Pinchbeck's book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl:

"Robert Johnson notes that the English language reflects our emotional paucity. Ancient Persian and Sanskrit possessed more than eighty words for love, denoting different qualities and valences of communal and erotic feeling. Whether we want to proclaim our affection for Krispy Kreme doughnuts or our significant other, we are stuck with just the single word, obliterating differences and qualities."

For my part, since I'm always trying to live in the present, I never considered the idea that we would be long-term partners nor have I ever made any decision about our relationship based on anything other than how I feel about her moment to moment. Certainly some might question why I would want to continue spending time with someone who doesn't love me as much as I love them. There are several reasons:

1. First and foremost, she's a lot of fun to be with, and as I've said before, I'm attracted to the specific wavelength of energy she puts out, and that hasn't changed. We learn a lot from each other and we both enjoy being physically affectionate. That's not something I find often from anybody, so it's a rare gift I'm not willing to throw away.

2. Since we're polyamorous, we are both supportive of long-term, romantically committed, multi-partner relationships, meaning that if either or both of us wanted to pursue a relationship with someone else, we would each be supportive of the other. Our relationship is such that we can talk openly about being attracted to other people, and we know this is not a reflection on our attraction for each other. Since there's no "goal" to our relationship, it's possible that we could remain physically affectionate friends indefinitely, even as other more serious relationships come and go in our lives.

3. After my experience with Agnieszka Prime, I'm really not afraid of being hurt by a partner again. I've been through the worst, and I know how to keep it from happening again. Plus, Polina has always been open and honest about her feelings for me, so there's little chance of having unfulfilled expectations with her. So if I were to abandon our friendship, it would be me acting out of fear, and I don't want to do that. If I did, it would be like saying that I learned nothing from my experience with AP. And as I wrote before, if I go through life trying to avoid getting hurt, I'm going to miss a lot of chances to be happy.

And that's the sum of it, I suppose. I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to relationships - it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Tara and I talk about this all the time - you put one foot in front of the other, take it one day at a time, be good to one another, and all we can do is see where the path takes you. We can't control or predict what's going to happen in the future, so it doesn't make sense to base decisions in the present on a guess about it. All we can do is try to be happy in the moment, and at this moment, my life is happier with Penny in it.

After our long walk, we drove into the city to meet up with her parents and grandparents at the Cinema Village to see a movie called Perestroika. Since Penny's family is Ukrainian and Jewish, this was a very personal film for them, and I enjoyed it a lot myself. I'd describe it as Woody Allen directing a movie based on a book by Milan Kundera. Afterwards I took Penny home while the rest of her family went to Brooklyn to drop off the grandparents before meeting up with us in Staten Island. We had a late supper of her mom's famous cabbage borscht (my first, I believe) and our leftover pasta from lunch.

Penny and I went upstairs and poked around on her Facebook page and other things online until it got so late that I just decided to accept her offer to stay in the guest room so I wouldn't have to drive home in the pouring rain at night. We stayed up past 3 a.m. in her room talking more about her trip to Argentina before I finally retired to the guest bed. I woke up early, got dressed and kissed Penny goodbye, leaving her to catch some extra zzz's while I drove home. It was a very good visit, in so many ways.

Cat humor

Heh, this is the funniest little clip, taken from Bug's Web site. She says it's a good idea of her morning routine (my family has three cats, in case you were wondering...)



I spent the day sending out the press release for Katelynn's appearance at the next Polyamorous NYC meeting on May 20, and secured a listing with a photo in HX Magazine, one of the more prominent free gay publications in the city. I'm hoping we will get some mainstream media at the event as well.

Tara and I had one of our long poly-mono discussions last night, which always seems to upset her moreso than me. I miss our physical intimacy very much, and as that's the only thing I'm not getting from her and it's very unlikely we'll resume that activity, I'm forced to seek it elsewhere unless I'm planning to be asexual. I've never been very good with dating, but I have faith that the right person (or persons) will come along someday.

A room with a view

I had a very good interview with the PR firm in the city on Wednesday. They were mighty impressed with my new and improved resume, and said they were just waiting to hear about a large piece of business from a major insurance company that they might win. If they get it, the head guy said I would be an ideal candidate, because of my background in the insurance and legal industries. He also let slip a piece of inside information that I need to research, as it might help me to gain an advantage in getting a job at a different firm. So all in all, it was not a waste of time.

The nice thing about this firm is the space. The two conference rooms are bright and thoroughly modern-looking, and they both have plenty of windows. As managing director, I would get an office with a window, something I've been craving for the last three years. At Agent K, all the windows were taken up by private offices of the senior executives, except for the three corner offices which were vacated and therefore used as meeting rooms. But you couldn't really look out the window unless you actually walked into the room. All the more commonly-used meeting rooms and the lobby were windowless, and you couldn't see out a single window from the cube farm or even if you took a casual stroll around the office, unless you poked your head into someone's private space.

While I was waiting for the interview to begin, I had a nice view straight down Third Avenue, past my old office and the famous Lipstick Building that I used to walk by every day. I could also almost see the East River and Roosevelt Island beyond. It is by no means as impressive as the lobby of the downtown firm I once interviewed at but I'll take any view after two-and-a-half years in a windowless office. That is certainly one thing I missed about my old job in Houston, where I had an eighth-floor view right above the West Loop, the busiest stretch of freeway in Texas, and downtown in the distance.

The PolyNYC meeting later that evening was sparsely attended, with only about 18-20 people showing up. However, we are seeing an influx of new members, and many of them are GLBT folks. There was a posse of about six or seven lesbians who have come to the last two meetings and contributed a lot of viewpoints that we haven't heard much before. Apparently, if there's one community that processes relationships more than polys, it's lesbians. The topic was how to foster group intimacy, and I got to share some of my thoughts about the importance of touch ("The importance of touch" - April 2, 2008) and found that struck a chord with some of the gay men there, who lamented that most men in our society are conditioned to believe that all touching has sexual meaning.

I've also been tearing through the Harry Potter series with an Anita Blake-like fervor, finishing Books 4-6 in the past two weeks, and starting on the final chapter now. They are surprisingly addictive once you get beyond what's been shown in the movies, but of course the big downside is that there aren't going to be any more of them. If I could only get hooked on Star Wars novels, then I'd be set for life - there's no way I could exhaust that pipeline.

Busy start of the week

After a month of mostly inactivity, it has been and is going to be a busy week. Monday I went into the city for a Poly Happy Hour that takes place the second Monday of each month. I've never been to one because up until recently, Monday nights have been date nights for me and Tara, since it's also Buffy's yoga night.

The happy hour is held at China 1 Antique Restaurant and Lounge and it's one of the weirder places I've been. When you walk in, it just looks like a small, intimate Chinese restaurant, but with only about three tables and the rest of it bar seating. But when you descend down the narrow staircase in the back, it leads to a maze-like, subterranean space that kind of reminds me of the dungeon in The Silence of the Lambs. The air is heavily perfumed with incense, and the lighting is very dim, except in one brightly lit corner with seating and pillows arranged around a small coffee table. All along the walls are intimate booths where people can have more privacy, most of them with decorative grates attached to the wall that are used for bondage activities (I saw one girl handcuffed to the wall with her hands above her head). Apparently there are a couple of kink parties hosted there each month as well.

The downstairs consists of two large rooms, each about three times the size of the small room upstairs. One room has a DJ station and a fish tank with Chinese goldfish in the middle of the room. One of the booths in that room doesn't have a table, only a high couch or what looks like a small bed for people to cuddle. Apparently my friend Lyndell was snogging somebody in there earlier in the evening, but I heard about it from Kyle. All around the perimeter of the room are padded benches and pillows, and more dark booths.

I met some of my poly friends there in order to start the process of formalizing our new group, called Open Love NY, and discuss the terms of splitting off from Polyamorous NYC. We sat in the brightly lit corner and had our meeting as more people came and started to mingle. Once we settled everything, we brought some new people over and I met several of my friends' friends. Lyndell left with me around 10 pm to head to a karaoke party uptown, and we ran into one of her friends from her theater days on the 14th Street bus. Lyndell got off at Union Square, and I chatted with her friend all the way to Penn Station. He's a gay black man who works by day as a law librarian and at night is part of a troupe of actors doing William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. He has a marvelous speaking voice.

Tonight we went out to celebrate Bee's birthday at Colucci's Ristorante where local personality Uncle Floyd performs each Tuesday night. Part musician, part off-color comedian, he and his friends in the audience put on a show that had all of us in stitches. It's a very old-timey act full of bad jokes and one-liners, but done with so much style and pizzazz that you can't help but laugh.

Tomorrow I have my first real job interview since that last one in Hackensack - this one in the city a block north of Agent K (which is code for my old firm). That means I have to slosh around in the wet weather with my suit and heels on, carrying my portfolio - ugh. Then I'll stay in the city and help out at the PolyNYC meeting at 8 pm. I think with the lack of volunteers now, I've been promoted from chair arranger to door greeter and money taker. I hope I can handle the increased responsibility...